Wispering

Out Here in the Rain

The children of royalty and nobility had bogeymen crafted of fantasy and instruction. These were mythical creatures that lived under beds or in closets, who helped shaped the next generation of rulers into the sort of citizen who obeyed the laws of good behavior. As beasts of the imagined shadow, the bogeymen followed certain rules, could be warded against, and eventually faded into the daylight of adulthood.

For the children of the poor, the children in the Nagma or the Saltcatcher districts, there was no luxury of bogeymen who were made up. The creatures that preyed on them in the night were all too real, all too persistent, and all too human.